Journal of Contemporary Issues in Business and Government Vol. 26, No. 2, 2020 https://cibg.org.au/ P-ISSN: 2204-1990; E-ISSN: 1323-6903 DOI: 10.47750/cibg.2020.26.02.258 Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Society of Business and management. This is an Open Access Article distributed under the CC BY license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Oral Hygiene Practices Followed by Physically and Mentally Challenged People P.S. THANA LAKSHME 1 , KEERTHI SASANKA 2* , V. VISHNU PRIYA 3 1 Saveetha Dental College and Hospital, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences , Saveetha University ,Chennai - 600077 2 Department of Prosthodontics, Senior Lecturer, Saveetha dental college and hospitals, Saveetha institute of medical and technical science, Chennai, India. 3 Department of Biochemistry, Saveetha Dental College and Hospital, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Saveetha University, Chennai - 600077 *Corresponding Author Email: 151901048.sdc@saveetha.com 1 , keerthis.sdc@saveetha.com 2 , vishnupriya@saveetha.com 3 Abstract: Physically and mentally challenged individuals are a unique set of patient population whose health demands and oral care demands are considerably different from the normal patient population. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the oral hygiene practices followed by physically and mentally challenged people in Madurai district. The study was carried out in a homogeneous population of 100 physically and mentally challenged participants. The self structured questionnaire was distributed among the targeted population. The data were collected and presented in the form of pie charts.The population mostly consisted of mentally challenged people who were even unaware of the basic hygiene to be maintained whereas the rest of the population were visually and hearing impaired persons and handicaps. The most surprising result of the study is that the population was aware of their impact of disability on oral health.The result establishes that there exists a better awareness and knowledge among caretakers on oral hygiene practices that should be followed on such differently abled persons.Creating awareness and providing knowledge on oral hygiene practices would provide better oral health and thus avoiding complications in systemic health. Keywords: Oral hygiene practices; Impact of disability on oral health; awareness; knowledge; educational background; awareness programs and teaching. INTRODUCTION Oral hygiene is the practice of keeping one’s mouth clean and free of disease and other complications. The oral hygiene practices include regular brushing of teeth and cleaning between the teeth which us to be carried out regularly. This constant practice of maintenance of oral hygiene will provide prevention against periodontal diseases and bad breath (Darby and Walsh, 2009). Maintaining oral hygiene and a proper oral health is not only an essential criteria to maintain your looks and personality,it is also a key to feel good,eat and speak properly without any consciousness , that too always the anteriors are chosen to satisfy esthetics (Altun et al., 2010; Ashok and Suvitha, 2016; Ariga et al., 2018).The oral hygiene practices and oral health prevailing in an individual has influence over the systemic health of which every individual was aware of and expected to maintain in a proper state (Institute of Medicine, Board on Health Sciences Policy and Committee on Advancing Pain Research, Care, and Education, 2011). But oral hygiene is often taken for granted (Supriya et al., 2019). The fact that one should be aware of is that mouth is the window of general systemic health of an individual. The main goal in maintenance of proper oral health with a proper oral hygiene practices comprise preventing plaque formation which leads to various periodontal diseases like periodontitis, gingivitis , bleeding gums and other periodontal complications, also to avoid halitosis (PharmacyLibrary, no date; Ganapathy, Kannan and Venugopalan, 2017; Jyothi et al., 2017; Kannan and Venugopalan, 2018). In our study we take differently abled people into account who are considered as the substantial section of the general population. These people should also earn the same opportunities as those of the common population to maintain oral hygiene practices. But regularly, the most common unmet needs for the differently abled people covers the improper or inappropriate dental treatment and advice to maintain a good oral hygiene or health (Kaur et al., 2013). The oral health observed in differently abled people is determined by diet and certain physical limitations that prevail in physically challenged people leading to back of proper cleaning habits and existing bad oral health (Duraisamy et al., 2019).The proper maintenance of oral hygiene will prevent the alarming